Dr. Jing Wang
Dr. Jing Wang
Associate Professor, Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine

BSc in Medicine, Xi’an Medical University
MSc Physiology, McGill University
PhD Biochemistry, University of Ottawa
Postdoctoral Fellow, Developmental and Stem Cell Biology Program, Hospital for Sick Children Research Institute, Toronto, ON

Phone
613-737-8899 ext. 71954


Biography

Overview of interests

Dr. Wang is a neurobiologist whose research focuses on delineating molecular mechanisms that regulate the proliferation and differentiation of neural stem cells, including both embryonic and adult neural stem cells, with the ultimate goal of defining ways to recruit the stem cells that are resident in the brain, and to thereby promote neural repair. Dr. Wang uses stroke as a brain disease model to study whether molecular pathways that regulate the recruitment of neural stem cells under pathological conditions could be modulated and utilized to promote brain repair and stroke recovery.

Scientific breakthroughs / impact

As a postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Wang was the first person to discover that a widely-used human diabetes drug, metformin, is able to promote neurogenesis and to improve spatial learning in adult mice. As a direct outcome of this seminal finding, a clinical trial on the effectiveness of metformin at improving functional recovery after acquired brain injury is under way.

Grant support

Dr. Wang’s research is supported by the J.P. Bickell Foundation.

Research interests

  • Neural stem cell
  • Regeneration
  • Stroke Recovery
  • Differentiation
  • Proliferation